Blogging Ottinger (tim)Presentation Frustration with OpenOffice.org
Pretty much everything in OpenOffice.org makes me happy. I have had a problem converting some files from powerpoint lately, and that makes me sad.
It doesn’t happen in every diagram, but some diagrams do not display correctly.
In the normal editing mode everything looks fine, but there is a flaw in slideshow mode (where you need it to be most correct). The problem shows up when there is a connecting line between two diagonal points, and the line has one or more 90-degree elbows. Impress will add an additional diagonal line between the two points. The extra lines can make some of my more complex slides look totally messy, and destroys the teaching value of said slides.
I think the diagrams originated in PowerPoint. I can ungroup and regroup the various elements, and that fixes the lines. However it ruins the text. In order to recover the text, I have to go to every text box on the screen and right-click, select PositionAndSize, then click the boxes for FitWidthToText and FitHeightToText, at which time the text returns to its original size.
A very busy diagram may have more than a dozen little text boxes, especially if it is demonstrating something complex in UML like a big state machine with nested states.
It’s very frustrating, but I have only about 40 more diagrams to go.
I tried recording a macro to make the changes, but the macro mechanism isn’t in OO.o’s drawing program. I tried selecting all the text fields, but then the boxes I need to check are disabled (grayed-out). I tried changing the default style of all the text, and it looked like it worked wonders, until I pasted it back into Impress, at which time I suddenly had multiple point sizes. It was a total mess. It’s easier for me to redraw some of these than mess with fixing them.
I tried a few formats. I can get eps files to come in okay and resize, but none of my drawing tools are providing me with great UML eps files. Back to the drudgery. I think I’ll install a mouse odometer and see how much I’m really chasing the cursor around with this.
Grrrr…
